An over­drive with fairly stan­dard three­knob con­fig­u­ra­tion, the Ghetto Stomp is said to recre­ate the sound of New Or­leans and old-school blues tones. And there’s a cer­tain truth in that its sound is rem­i­nis­cent of low-wattage valve-amp­style drive with a vin­tage US flavour: think small Fen­der tweed or Supro.

At low set­tings of the Gain knob, the pedal will add some hair to a clean amp with just enough grit to add bite to your notes and chords. Its voic­ing fea­tures a fair de­gree of bot­tom-end girth, use­ful for fat­ten­ing up sin­gle coils and ev­i­denced by the ex­tra body it gives our Tele bridge pickup. That’s bal­anced by a Tone knob that adds pres­ence in a nat­u­ral way, but never gets too toppy. Full Gain de­liv­ers low to medium over­drive with a real raunch to it, all vol­ume knob and touch-sen­si­tive, en­cour­ag­ing you to ex­ploit the dy­nam­ics and dig in for the dirt. [TC]